The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of the reading metacognitive awareness (RMA) among the secondary school students. Specifically, the study answers the following question: Are there differences in reading metacognitive awareness in terms of gender, place of residence, family socioeconomic status, self-confidence and time to learn?

The instrument used measured the degree of RMA and it consisted of four components which were; conditional knowledge, planning, regulation and evaluation. The study was carried among 317 Form Five students. Data was collected based on the Index of Reading Awareness (IRA). This Index consisted of 20 questions appraising the level of RMA.

IRA was chosen by McLain, Gridley and McIntosh (1991) because they found it suitable for measuring the level of reading metacognitive awareness. Lipson and Wixson (1989) also recommended that teachers used the IRA to detect the level of students' metacognitive awareness, as well as in ensuring the effectiveness of metacognitive strategies.

This study has shown that the differences between boys and girls in the reading metacognitive awareness is significant. This means that girls are more conscious in reading than male students. This finding is compatible with the studies of Paris and Jacobs (1984) in which female students scored significantly higher than male students in the IRA.

The findings also show that differences in residence and socioeconomic status of families of students in the reading metacognitive awareness are not significant. Students who live in the city and the students who live in rural areas have the same abilities in the reading metacognitive awareness. This indicates that the level of awareness and control of a student of metacognitive in reading is not dependent on external factors such as place of residence and the surrounding socioeconomic status families of students. What is important, the students must receive training, exposure and systematic testing to increase the level of awareness of metacognitive in reading.

From another aspect, the findings of this study suggested that differences in students' self-assessment of metacognitive awareness of reading is significant. It clearly shows that there is self-assessment which affects students metacognitive awareness of reading.

In addition, this study also shows that the difference in the amount of reading time in the metacognitive awareness of reading is significant. This clearly shows that the use of the time to read influence the metacognitive awareness of reading.

These findings show that the students' personalities or internal factors also influences metacognitive awareness of reading. Therefore, they need to be changed through intervention, education or psychological actions to improve the functions of personality and cognitive and metacognitive skills so that they are more prepared for a systematic and balanced academic achievement.

We report a series of experiments investigating the influence of feeling lucky or unlucky on people’s choice of known-risk or ambiguous options using the traditional Ellsberg Urns decision-making task. We induced a state of feeling lucky or unlucky in participants by using a rigged wheel-of-fortune game, that just missed either the bankrupt or the jackpot outcome. In the first experiment a large reversal of the usual ambiguity aversion effect was shown, indicating that feeling lucky made participants significantly more ambiguity seeking than usual. However, this effect failed to replicate in five refined and larger follow-up experiments. Thus we conclude that there is no evidence that feeling lucky reliably influences ambiguity aversion. Men were less ambiguity averse than women when there were potential gains to be had, but there were no gender differences when the task was negatively framed in terms of losses.

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JULIA ELIZABETH ANNAS
Regents Professor of Philosophy, University of Arizona

DAVID CHALMERS
Professor of Philosophy, ARC Federation Fellow, Director - Center for Consciousness, Australian National University

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